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Comment by justinph | Hacker News Reader

Dear Justice Department: Take a look at google AMP and how they use it to strong-arm publishers by linking it to search placement. You'll find some stuff.

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People don't seem to understand how this stuff works in the US, Google has full editorial control over their search results protected by the first amendment and that right was affirmed in court time and time again:

https://searchengineland.com/another-court-affirms-googles-f...

If you don't like their free no lock in service go elsewhere, and that's why there is no sherman act case here, which is why if the DOJ actually does anything here it would be a waste of time and resources.

I'm not a lawyer but the first amendment argument is a separate concern than antitrust violations. You can exercise your first amendment rights while still breaching antitrust law.

Depends on what's being investigated here, if the government would actually want to compel Google to alter their search results then it's a first amendment case.

> Take a look at google AMP

The argument here is its unfair to bias ranking towards a preferred format. In this case, something about excluding competitors, except AMP is completely open-source[1] so...?

The counterargument is yes you can, because it's your pamphlet/newspaper/website and you're the editor, not the government.

[1] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml

Yeah, if AMP is antitrust then so is Facebook's Open Graph. Despite the hate for both on HN, neither format is targeting competitors or hurting consumers in this case.

I think the antitrust argument against AMP is a bit more subtle. The argument seems to be that Google is abusing it's market dominance to push sites into using AMP. This in turn prevents them from using third party trackers, while the pages will be served via Google caches when accessed from Google search. Hence Google gets to track the visitor, while third party tracking from other providers is prevented. I.e. Google is abusing it's power to thwart competition in the analytics and ad-tech business.

Of course as a consumer, I don't really care whether it's some random company or Google who gets to violate my privacy, and I especially couldn't care less about lack of innovation in the privacy violation business, so I think the antitrust angle here is pretty slim.

Maybe - is Amp rendering blocking third party tracking from GTM tags?

Third party trackers are not prevented.

You can use Google Analytics through the <amp-analytics> element [1], but since AMP prevents third-party scripts that were not approved by Google, I'm not sure how you would include other trackers in an AMP site.

[1] https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

You can easily use other analytics vendors https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/optimize-...

Yes, the first amendment here does not seem to apply, except if the poster above, has something else in mind? That DOJ even considers going to court, hints that they have a strong case -- given how conservative the DOJ is to betting on a court case and not settling.

No one is reporting that the DOJ is considering going to court nor that they have any "case" let alone a "strong" one if the WSJ reports are to be believed it's very preliminary stuff.

Thank you for the correction!

> You can exercise your first amendment rights while still breaching antitrust law.

Go on... example?

Here is the first example I came across:

https://www.rbr.com/six-broadcast-tv-groups-settle-doj-antit...

No one is saying these broadcast groups don't have 1st amendment rights, just that they were going about it in an anti-competitive way.

That's a price fixing/cartel case not a first amendment one.

Isn't that the point? What you prosecute is not related the first amendment, despite the actions being protected by it.

This case is clearly price fixing, not first amendment.

The radio stations weren't broadcasting their prices to consumers, but secretly communicating with competitors to form a cartel, which is forbidden. Doesn't matter if they were radio stations or grocery stores.

The fact that the companies in that suit were radio stations seems irrelevant to the facts of the case; they could have been hamburger restaurants and the legal question would not change.

I’m fairly sure strong arming your clients does fall under anti trust, regardless of how hostile google is to its ad targets.

> strong arming your clients

You're describing any business, that's how business works.

? I though a business arrangement was meant to be optional and mutually beneficial.

Playing hardball is itself not an antitrust violation. Doing it to maintain monopoly power is. (Under section 2 of the Sherman Act.)

Google is not a monopoly in terms of consumer choice (we can choose any one of mostly identical search engines), but it is in terms of market share ala internet explorer. It is in a perfect situation to leverage this to force arbitrary policies that mostly benefit it, like amp.

Google has monopoly power [0] even though consumers can choose to use other search providers. They just don’t.

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren (not exactly a conservative Trump supporter) seems to think that antitrust regulators do indeed have a legitimate role to play:

Warren would appoint regulators who would reverse some of the biggest tech mergers that have taken place in recent years. That would mean the reversal of Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Zappos, Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, and Google’s acquisition of Waze, Nest, and DoubleClick.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/8/18256192/el...

Downvotes be damned, but I honestly can’t tell if this is satire.

lol. well, truthfully, i was trying to make a serious statement.

i figured mentioning a proponent of big tech breakup with valid legal credentials and a different political axe to grind might be useful evidence in deciding whether the antitrust case had any merit.

(i believe the Vox article is trying to be serious as well.)

Indeed. Many people fail to grasp that in the grand scheme of things, this is unlikely to change anything. Google has always been at the center of the tech industry. Some of its services are not only important to the public and vital for the U.S. economy, but also very critical to national security as well. Rest assured that efforts will be spent to ensure Google will continue to remain at this position in the foreseeable future. Actions like these are more likely to serve as a way to calm down the public aka damage control.

>Google has always been at the center of the tech industry.

Are you showing your age?

This is not a first amendment issue, this is leveraging a monopolistic market share to force technologies like amp on customers.

I think this is a really simplistic view of how the first amendment applies to businesses. I think the key here is the definition of a 'public space' as what freedoms a business has changes when they provide a public space. It's a bit unclear what defines a public space in the digital world, I'd argue that physical presence isn't a requirement and the key aspects are accessibility and communication. i.e. If anyone can go there, and anyone can communicate there, it's a public space. _If_ this is true, then many sites are public spaces, certainly social media. Search is a bit more unclear since the communication aspect is questionable.

Yeah, this is simply capitalism.

Remove the cause and not the symptoms!

AMP is just the start. I won't be surprised if we find out Google is promoting websites for using Google Analytics.

There's already some questionable aspects, like the way that Google search query strings are only available if you sign up for Google Analytics. And I would be very interested to hear what Google does with the other data they collect with Analytics...

No, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLmO1GE4GvI

> search quality in general does not use Google Analytics in ranking

> it won't affect your ranking

Do you actually believe them? I don't.

I agree with lohszvu and given this was made nearly a decade ago, I'm pretty sure their tactics have changed (I don't even think AMP was made in 2010).

If Google we’re truly committed to building a search engine that is useful they would give the user control of ranking. I hope one day we see a search engine not driven by ad incentives....

They don't even have to be that "extreme" about it. Simple tools that would still allow them to "sell" ads but give the user more control.

E.g. Being able to "blacklist" certain domains from results.

Same thing applies to youtube. You can not permanently block/remove/disable channels from being present in the content results/feed.

I think that deep-down Google high-ups "know" that giving some of these "basic" usability features would essentially disable their control of the content that they push to you. E.g. imagine publicly-shared black-lists of bad domains and bad channels that one could subscribe to. Similar to the ad blockings lists that have generated a bit of a thriving ecosystem. I.e. smart people would eventually use this basic "building block" to build content-control that would be more decentralized/democratic and really personal.

It would be interesting to start an Hacker News but for 'anti-trust' suggestions.

Basically you have a company and then people like us can upvote areas we think companies are breaking the law.

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